The academic study of religion has long enjoyed a variety of philosophies and methodologies. A new entrant to this list has now arisen: metamodernism. This article examines the claims of metamodernism and makes an initial attempt to relate it to the academic study of religion, both in its guise as Religious Studies and, more tentatively, as the Theological sciences. Metamodernism, with its emphasis on oscillation and simultaneity, shows great promise as an explanatory framework to understand certain current religious developments, such as the ‘Spiritual but not Religious’ phenomenon. It may also assist in creating a growing convergence between the various branches of the academic study of religion.

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Some Africans were aware of Buddhism at a very early stage in history—indeed, some of the earliest evidence for Western knowledge of Buddhist traditions comes from Northeast Africa—yet today Africa is the least Buddhist of the inhabited continents. This chapter charts the complex history of Buddhist traditions in Africa and sketches the current distribution of these traditions on the continent. Inevitably, legacies of colonial occupation have affected the distribution of Buddhist traditions in Africa. In South Africa there is an overwhelmingly white (Caucasian) convert community that barely interacts with small ethnic Buddhist traditions. Only in recent years has a new approach to Buddhist traditions arisen, a service-oriented approach that sees Africa not as a potential source of converts, but as a field for the practical application of compassion.

This article examines the prehistory of today's dialogue between Buddhists and Christians. Contrary to what one might think, pre-modern Europeans did have some understanding of Buddhism, however limited and distorted it might have been. Asians during the same period had a far better chance of understanding Christianity, because of the widespread presence of the Nestorian Church from Arabia to China. We do have evidence that interaction between Buddhists and Christians lead to some creative synthesis between the two.

The Buddhist Retreat Centre (BRC), about 12 kilometers from the town of Ixopo in Kwazulu-Natal Province, South Africa, opened its doors for business in 1980. For twenty-five years it has been at the centre of the small but growing South African Buddhist community-to such an extent, indeed, that the name of the town has become transposed onto the centre, and within this community a question such as "Have you been to Ixopo recently?" refers not to the town itself, but to the BRC. This gives us an initial indication of how influential the centre has become. To mark the BRC's impending 25th anniversary, I researched its history, its functioning within its community and how it is likely to forge ahead. This entailed interviews with the founder and with staff members and teachers past and present, as well as a perusal of brochures and other publications the centre has produced over the years. Founding and prehistory The history of the BRC, especially in its early years, is inextricably intertwined with the personal history of its founder, Louis van Loon, and to understand why the BRC came into being we need to go back far beyond its official opening in 1980. Van Loon was born to a thoroughly secular family in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1935. In 1956 he came to South Africa as a newly-qualified engineer. Apart from his professional qualifications however, like many of his generation, his education had been interrupted by World War II and postwar austerities, and he was very much self-educated. At the time, the Dutch government was subsidizing the emigration of young, qualified people to various other parts of the world, South Africa included. When a job opportunity in South Africa came up, Van Loon did not hesitate. He arrived in the country with very little English, fifty pounds of subsidy money in hand and two suitcases, one filled with clothes, the other with art materials. After six months he had taken charge one of his company's sidelines, a soil analysis division, and it was during an investigation for this division that he first came to Durban. He persuaded his company to move the soil division to Durban, arguing that the far more diverse conditions in the area made it a more suitable location than the relatively uniform soil conditions of the Transvaal. Two years later, he started his own professional practice as architect and consulting engineer. Soon afterwards, Van Loon was sufficiently well established on a professional level to devote time to his philosophical interests. He became involved with Theosophy, "in those days, probably one of the most powerful alternative ways of seeing the world," 1 and then more particularly with the Theosophist offshoot, the Alice Bailey movement. It was in these circles that Van Loon got his first taste of Asian thought: "chakras, and kundalini and world cycles ... all that stuff." By then, he had also become a vegetarian and had taught himself astrology. He was, in fact, fast gaining a reputation for casting accurate horoscopes. Under the direction of Dr Douglas Baker, an...